


you can have my heart.. if you have the stomach to take it.

by nichaught



Category: Booksmart
Genre: F/F, Second Person, amy goes to boston, disregards canon but obviously im using it for character guidelines, hope goes to berklee, musician/journalist au, slowburn, they meet in a record/book store
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 22:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21586984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nichaught/pseuds/nichaught
Summary: hope is a tortured musician studying film scoring and philosophy (her principal instrument is piano) at berklee college of music. amy is a studious journalism major at boston university (minoring in women's, gender, and sexuality studies), fascinated with english literature. they both frequent the same book and record store/cafe, and every time they see each other they steal curious glances at one another in the midst of their browsing sessions. after an entire semester filled to the brim with wondrous gazes and possibilities, they are finally brought together. and the rest is history.
Relationships: Amy/Hope (Booksmart)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 39





	you can have my heart.. if you have the stomach to take it.

**Author's Note:**

> so first off im going to try something kind of risky and write this in the second person, inspired by this fic [ https://archiveofourown.org/works/3526574/chapters/7757108 ], which i read a few years ago and the use of second person was so effective i would go as far as to call it a literary masterpiece like.. holy fuck. second let me preface by saying that in this au, canon never happened, but i'm still going to use it as a character guideline, obviously. i know the booksmart fanbase isn't huge, but hopefully, there are people who love the story and resonate with these characters as much as i do. booksmart is the first story that has ever rendered me completely speechless at its ability to represent me. like it's crazy. i've watched it over 20 times and yet it never gets old. amy and hope make me feel something literally no other fictional couple could achieve and i honestly think it's the subtle hints that olivia wilde left throughout the movie about hope's feelings. if we ever got an amy/hope spinoff, it would most definitely be an incredibly torturous slowburn. so that's what i'm gonna write. godspeed everyone

_**-** _ _**Amy.** _

You’re tired. Exhausted, even. It’s midafternoon and you’ve just exited your History and Principles of Journalism course. It’s not that you don’t love journalism, you do. The process of learning it is just so goddamned tedious. You’ve still got Gender and Sexuality I in an hour and a half, so there’s no sense in going back to your dorm and napping for only thirty minutes. Molly’s with Jared. George and Alan are busy. Gigi’s too far to walk to. Your only viable option is Canned Heat, which isn’t a bad thing, per se. Canned Heat is your favorite book store, seeing as it’s the only book store within a 5-mile radius that carries the obscure literature you crave. Not only that, but it’s a triple threat, additionally serving as a record store and a café, meaning you can also check their classical section and pump yourself full of caffeine. You force your weary legs in the direction of Canned Heat.

Upon entrance, the shop doesn’t look like anything special. It’s just like Barnes and Noble, but on a much smaller scale. But the smallness of it is actually what turns you on to it. A family-run business like this is a much worthier cause than a large chain corporation, at least in your humble opinion. Plus, their books are so much cheaper and way less commercial-y. Another thing that Barnes and Noble doesn’t have? The hot skateboarder barista who’s always working the counter this time of day. Her name is Ryan, and she knows your coffee order by heart (which is not saying much considering you’re here every other day, but you digress). She makes you swoon harder than you’d ever admit to anyone, and you get a serious gay vibe from her. She cuffs her jeans, for fuck’s sake. Her personality leaves something to be desired, though. You don’t think you would thrive in a romantic relationship with her, but it’s fun to entertain the idea. You greet her kindly and she asks if you’re getting your usual. You respond in the affirmative as you make your way to the biography section, hoping to find something on Virginia Woolf.

Before you started college, you’d read every single item on the College Board’s recommended reading list, and then some. You go through books faster than the girl you always see at Canned Heat goes through Stevie Nicks records. As soon as you finish constructing this analogy, the girl in question pushes the shop door open and strolls to the counter in only four long strides. She and Ryan fist bump, exchange greetings, and she orders a green tea. Ryan slides one across the counter to her, already made in preparation for the girl’s arrival. Her name is Hope, or at least that’s what Ryan calls her. Every Wednesday, around three in the afternoon, without fail, she’s at Canned Heat. As are you, most Wednesdays. You’ve noticed she’s also here on Fridays, Saturdays, and the occasional Monday (every two weeks, to be exact). You actually haven’t realized until this moment, but you sort of have her schedule memorized as it relates to yours. You suppose you’ve been subconsciously taking note of when she’s here and when she’s not.

Hope is tall. Lanky. Infinitely interesting. She has a warped sense of fashion, but her fringed jackets and bell-bottom jeans suit her physique. It’d be an atrocity to see clothes of that nature on anyone else. You infer that she carries a tan laptop bag stuffed with sheet music and indecipherable handwritten notes at all times. Her facial structure is magnificent, you’ve never seen anything quite as godlike. Her eyes are the kind of brown that shimmers wonderfully in direct sunlight, her nose is slim and long, her lips are perfectly full, her jaw is chiseled. She’s quiet and reserved, yet you know a great deal about her just based on small details you’ve picked up through her visits to Canned Heat, which seem to always coincide with yours. There’s a game you like to play, in which you attempt to guess which section of the record collection she’ll peruse first. Monday, it was the jazz corner (she likes Dizzy Gillespie). Today, you guess 80’s rock. You’re correct, and you add it to your mental tally of times you’ve guessed right. According to your calculations, you’re sitting at an eighty-five percent success rate.

As much as you’d like to spark a conversation with Hope, you just aren’t confident enough, especially because she seems so… chill, you suppose, is the word. You’re really kind of the opposite, constantly fretting about deadlines and courses and time management. You resign yourself to the conclusion that you and Hope will never interact, much less become acquaintances, and you think you’re at peace with that. After meticulously thumbing through a sea of biographies, you find one on Woolf. Ryan rings it up for you and hands you your coffee, and you’re left with about forty minutes until you need to head back to campus for Gender and Sexuality. You sit with your Woolf biography and your coffee, immersing yourself in information. Every few minutes, your eyes dart up to the corner of the store where Hope is focused on finding her album of choice today, brow furrowed and eyes searching. You return to the book after a good seven seconds.

When your internal clock gives you a three-minute warning, you dogear your book, finish off the rest of your coffee, and stand. You thank Ryan, who is switching the store speaker from Paramore to Nirvana. Eyes still intently tracking the page (you don’t like to leave off on odd-numbered pages), you walk slowly toward the exit. As your hand rests on the door handle, about to pull to open it, you see a tall figure stumble in your peripheral vision. You feel the entire right side of your Boston University tee shirt become scalding hot against your skin, the aromatic quality of green tea assaulting your sense of smell. You wince (a little dramatically, probably) and turn over your shoulder to see those carefully crafted facial features you’ve been studying, completely frozen up in embarrassment and apology.

“Fuck, my bad. You should probably pay attention to your surroundings every once in a while, though.”

_**\- Hope.** _

You stand in the 80’s rock section of Canned Heat, searching for a record you’ll never find, because you’re not actually looking for one. You’re waiting for the girl with the Boston University shirt and the gold-rimmed specs to leave so that you can “accidentally” bump into her, giving you an excuse to engage in some kind of interaction with her. At this point, you’ve been throwing wistful gazes her way for an entire 4 months, to no avail. She hasn’t so much as looked your way, not even once. You don’t know what it is that’s urging you to sit down at her table, telling you to tell her to take her nose out of that goddamned book and notice you, but it’s too aggressive to ignore.

In fact, this feeling has been tugging at you since the moment you laid eyes on her. Maybe six inches shorter than you, a nervous aura about her, reading something different every day you see her. You’ve put her at the center of your schedule. As long as you know she’s at Canned Heat, and your classes at Berklee allow it (they usually do), you’re there too. You’ve discovered she’s there some Wednesdays around three, Fridays at five or six, Saturdays at one (with another girl who seems way too high-strung to survive in any social climate), and every two Mondays. You’ve confided in Annabelle and Tanner about your dilemma, and their solutions always chalk up to something like, “Dude, I don’t know why you’re being so weird about it if you’re not even into her. Just fuckin’ talk to her.”

And you’re not into her. She reads religiously. She goes to Boston University. She’s a journalism major, women’s studies minor (discovered through eavesdropping on her and Ryan’s conversations). Those aren’t even personality traits, how could you be into her? Either way, you want to know her, but socialization has never come naturally to you. You’re often too cynical or sarcastic right off the bat, and that’s just who you are, but it scares people away. To avoid this kind of misunderstanding, you make a conscious decision to “bump into her” when she inevitably attempts to leave Canned Heat focused on some nerdy biography rather than on the world around her.

And that’s exactly what she does, so you start to move swiftly towards her. You don’t process it at first, one minute she’s dry, and the next she’s partially soaked in steaming liquid. Your green tea. You feel worse than you meant to when you see that she’s grimacing in… pain? Annoyance? You can’t tell. And then she locks eyes with you. You want to apologize profusely because you know she’s got a class soon and now she’s going to be late for it. She doesn’t know you know that. She can’t know you know that, that’s stalkerish and weird and creepy and you don’t want that to be her first impression of you. You calm yourself quickly and silently as you form a half-assed apology followed by some snarky remark that she may or may not take kindly to.

“Fuck, my bad. You should probably pay attention to your surroundings every once in a while, though.” Her mouth opens as if to speak, but then closes indecisively. She doesn’t look pleased with you.

“Well obviously you weren’t paying any mind to your surroundings either, so why is it my fault that I’m covered in hot tea and late to my Gender and Sexuality class?” You shoot Ryan a tentative look, and the shrug she sends in return offers no support.

“Gender and Sexuality, you’re cool. It was a joke.” You smirk involuntarily.

“Not a very funny one. You ruined my book.”

“I can buy another one for reparation purposes.”

“No, you can’t. Have you ever even been to the other half of this store in the four months you’ve been here? The books are all second hand, they don’t have multiples.” You’re shocked to learn that she’s noticed you.

“So why don’t you text me the title, author, and edition so I can order it off of Amazon or something? With all that reading you do, I figured you might have a little more common sense than that.” Feigning indifference, you take the tarnished book from her lightly shaking (from frustration, you assume) hands and scribble your number on the cracked spine, untouched by your tea, with the pen you keep in your fringe jacket pocket. You hand the book back to her and she receives it gingerly, confusion and irritation evident in her expression. She doesn’t speak, just looks at you. You stare blankly.

“Listen, as much as I would love to see who emerges victorious from this staring contest, I have Intro to Film Scoring in 30 minutes. Give your professor my best regards.” She stays silent until you’re halfway out the door.

“The CEO of Amazon exploits his hardworking employees. Use Powell’s Books or Better World.” You scoff as if to mock the morality of her words, but you make a mental note and eventually, an actual note in your planner. The entire walk back to Berklee, you’re replaying the interaction in your head, trying to decipher her tone and facial expression. She seemed simultaneously upset and intrigued. And perhaps you detected a glimmer of amusement in her irritatingly innocent eyes? Intro to Film Scoring is a lost cause before you even step foot in the lecture hall. You’re lucky you even remember to record the lecture on your tablet, because you don’t catch a single word that is uttered the entire hour. You’re too busy thinking about the girl with the gold-rimmed specs. You don’t think you’ll rest until you buy her that replacement book.

**Author's Note:**

> kind of a short chapter but it's really just there for expository purposes. comments are ALWAYS appreciated, whether they are of complementary or critical nature. thank u <3


End file.
